Petra Sela

Petra Sela (born June 15, 1947, Vienna, Austria), retired secretary to a professor and a lector for a Japanese professor in the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna. She is a haiku and prose writer and editor and has published 21 of her own books including seven of haiku. She has received two Austrian state awards for her body of work, the Theodor Körner-Preis (1999) and the Österreichisches Ehrenkreuz für Wissenschaft und Kunst (2003). Sela has been composing haikai for more than 30 years, studying the Japanese masters and actively developing a distinct Austrian style of haiku. She edited Vienna, Melting Pot of Haiku Poetry, the proceedings of an Austrian Haiku Society symposium, 2014, and two collections: Kunst & Wort. Haiga, 2021, and Alles Walzer, 200 Jahre Johann Strauss in Wort und Bild, 2025; and in 2019 she published a trilingual anthology, Afriku—Vienna meets Africa. Sela founded the Österreichische Haiku-Gesellschaft in 2010, and has since served as its president; she also edits the society’s Lotosblüte yearbooks. She resides in Vienna.

Note: This is an abstract of a longer biographical article to come.